The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1887-05-06

| Culu IOout Subo Nv ub8u1 Va uUuu6Uly 70
In and say: "What arc you doingi" " an
reading" "What are you readingr "a
book" You look at the book; II Is q bat
book. "Where did you get itw II Dor
rowed It," Alas, there are always thos'
abroad who would like to loan your son OF
daughter bad book. Everywhere, every
where an unclean literature. charge upor
1t the destruction Of 10000 immortal souls
and bid you this morning wake up to the
magnitude Of the theme shall take all the
worlds literature-good novels and bad,
travels true and false, histories faithful and
incorrect. legends beautiful and monstrous,
all tracts, all chronicles, all epilogues, ali
family, city, state and national libraries
pile them up In pyramid of literature and
then shall bring to bear upon it some grand,
glorious, infallible, unmistakable Christian
principles. God help me to speak with refer
ence to my last account and God help you to
listen.
I charge you, in the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pictures
of human life. Life is neither tragedy nor
a farce. Men are not all either knaves or
heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies.
And yet, il you depended upon much Of the
literature Of the day you would get the idea
that life, instead Of being something earnest,
something practical, is a fitful and fantas-
tic and extravagant thing. How poorly
prepared are that young man and woman
for the duties Of to-day who spent last night
wading through brilliant passages descriptive
of magnificent knavery and wickedness The
man will be looking all day long for his hero
inc in the tin shop, by the forge, in the
factory, in the counting room and he will not
find her, and he will be dissatisfied. A man
who gives himself up to the indiscriminate
reading of novels will be nerveless, inane and
q nuisance He will be fit neither for the
store, nor the shop, nor the field. ~ woman
who gives herself up to the indiscriminate
reading of novels will be untitled for the
duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There
she Is, hair dishevelled, countenance vacant,
cheeks pale. hands trembling, bursting into
tears at midnight over the fate Of some un-
fortunate lover; in the day time, when she
ought to be busy, staring by the half
hour at nothing, biting her finger nails
into the quick. The carpet, that was plain
before. will be palmer after having wandered
through romance all night long in tessel-
ated halls Of castles. And your industrious
will be more unattractive than
ever now that you have walked in tho ro-
nance through parks with plumed princesses
or lounged in the arbor with the polished des-
perado. Oh, these confirmed novel readersl
They are untitled for this life, which is q
discipline They know not how
10 go through the furnaces Of trial through
which they must pass, and they are untitled
Tor world where everything we gain we
achieve by hard, long continuing and ex-
naustive work.
Again: Abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture Of evil
have read books that had two elements
A them--the good and the bad. Which stuck
% your The bad! The heart of most people
s like sieve, which let's the small particles
II gold fall through, but keeps the great
finders. Once in while there is mind like
/ loadstone, which, plunged amid steel and
,rass filings, gathers up the steel and repels
he brass. But it is generally just the oppo-
ite If you attempt to plunge through a
ledge of burrs to get one blackberry, you
viii get more burrs than blackberries. You
annot afford to read bad book, how
,ver good you are. You say: "The influence
8 insignificant" tell you that the scratch |
# a pin has sometimes produced the lockjaw.
Alas, IL through curiosity, as many do, you 7
Try into an evil book, FOUR curiosity is as |
dangerous as that of the llan who would take
torch into gunpowder mill merely to see
whether it would really blow up or not. In
menagerie in New York man put his arm
through the bars of black leopard's cage.
he animals hide looked so Sleek and bright,
nd beautiful. He just stroked it once. The
lonster seized him, and he drew forth hand
ON, and mangled, and bleeding. Oh, touch
OF evil, even with the faintest stroke!
hough it may be glossy and beautiful, touch
not, lest you pull forth your soul torn and
leeding under the clutch of the black
'opard But" you say, show can I find
ut whether book is good or bad without
sading it" There is always something sus-
icious about a bad book. never knew an
kception- something suspicious in the index
r style Of illustration. This venomous rep
le almost always carries warning rattle.
Again: charge you to stand off from all
1859 books which corrupt the Imagination
nd inflame the passions. do not refer now
} that kind Of a book which the villain has
nder his coat waiting for the school to get
1t and then, looking both ways to see that
lere is no policeman around the block.
fers the book to your son on his way home.
do not speak Of that kind Of literature, but
lat which evades the law and comes out in
olished style, and with acute plot sounds the
'csin that rouses up all the baser passions of
'e soul To-day, under the nostrils of this
md, there is fetid, reeking, unwashed litera.
ire enough to poison all the fountains of
ubllc virtue and smite your SONS and daugh-
'rs as with the wing of destroying angel.
nd it is time that the ministers of the Gosnel
lew the trumpet and rallied the forces Of
ghteousness. all armed to the teeth. in this
reat battle against a depraved literature.
Again, abstain from those books which ara
pologetic of crime. It is sad thing that
,me of the best and most beautiful book
indery, and some Of the finest rhetoric. have
cen brought to make sin attractive, Vice is
horrible thing, anyhow. 1t is born in.
lame and it dies bowling in the darkness.
n this world it is scourged with a whip of
;orpions, but afterward the thunders Of
DDS wrath pursue it across bound]ess
esert, beating it with ruin and wee. When
on come to paint carnality, do not paint Il
, looking from behind embroidered curtains
: through lattice Of royal seraglio, but q
rithing in the agonies Of . city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to make i'm
nrity decent and crime attractive and
ypocrisy noble. Cursed be the books that
warm with hbertines and desperadoes, who \